


A Different Path

by AndoralsReach



Category: Dragon Age (Comics), Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-11
Packaged: 2018-03-01 02:35:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,687
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2756351
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AndoralsReach/pseuds/AndoralsReach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bioware has always told us that the Dragon Age comics canon is just one possible scenario for the future of Thedas; that while we are only reading about one path in the comics, things will have occurred differently in each game, depending on the actions of the players. There are different paths. I’ve decided to write a little bit about one of them.</p><p>This is a short story about a Tevinter slave.</p><p>TW: Abuse, spoiler warning for the first scene of Those Who Speak #1 (but not really anything beyond that).</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Fenris does not like parties.

Fenris doesn’t like anything, much; but then, nobody cares about what a slave might or might not like and so here he is, standing guard while Danarius rubs shoulders with his fellow magisters.

He doesn’t know or care what this particular ball is in aid of; such things are often merely an opportunity for Tevinter’s elite to attempt to show off to each other, and the pretexts for them are often flimsy. This, it seems, is a big one - it’s only early, but the hall is already half-full with some of the most important people in the city. Fenris suspects even more will make themselves known before the night is out.

His master is standing to one side of the room, making conversation with one of his fellow senators and a young man who Fenris believes has only just been formally recognized as a magister by the Senate. Danarius’s apprentice is there too, although it seems like she’s being talked _at_ rather than talked _to_ : Varania is a powerful mage, but she is also young, and fairly new to magisterial society, and an elf in a land where most elves would only get into a party such as this by being the ones serving the drinks. Condescension is common; respect from other magisters is rare.

"I hope you understand what a magnificent opportunity Danarius has given you," the other senator is telling her.

Danarius chuckles. “Oh, don’t worry. She understands.”

"Many would kill for the chance to learn from someone as talented as Senator Danarius," Varania says, "I could not be more honored." She looks faintly miserable, but then Fenris has never seen the apprentice at a point where she looked anything otherwise.

He dislikes Varania: not because she is cruel, because she isn’t – not like Hadriana was, and not even like Danarius can be. She usually ignores him - not in the casual way most Tevinter citizens ignore slaves but with a studied avoidance, her eyes flicking to his left and right but never on him, as if he is a hole in the universe. And she is sometimes strangely kind – giving him scraps of meals that are of far too high a calibre for a slave to eat, occasionally covering for him when he makes mistakes, and it makes him hugely uncomfortable because he doesn’t know why. These are things no slave should expect, and it concerns him that he has no idea what she expects from him in return. With Danarius, at least, there are rules, boundaries that he understands, even if he doesn’t like them.

“Yes, well. For your sake I hope you make a better job of it than your predecessor,” says the senator. “I can’t say I harboured any great love for – whatever her name was, I forget – but that’s a wretched way for anybody to go. It would be a shame for something similar to happen to a pretty thing such as you.”

“I’m gratified to see you now keep your dog collared, Senator,” says the other magister, turning to Danarius. “It’s only polite, in civilised society.”

“I’d thank you to stay out of how I choose to present my slaves, Vitus,” replies Danarius. “But you do speak the truth.” He beckons Fenris over. He hooks a finger around the ring set into his collar, tugs it, laughs. “The last time the wolf got loose, his little rampage cost me a member of my household and,” he continues, as if the latter is far more regrettable than the former, “ _considerable_ inconvenience. I find it helps to remind him who is truly in charge, every now and again.” He tugs harder, and Fenris takes it, head bowing obligingly. “Fetch me another drink,” Danarius purrs into his ear, and then he lets go. Fenris straightens up, swallows, and does as he is told.

He doesn’t remember his ‘little rampage’. Danarius refers to the incident every so often, particularly at parties, and always with an air of mild, condescending amusement. After all, if one owns a beast so wild and strong that it once broke loose from its chain and wreaked havoc, what does that say about the strength of the man who managed to recapture the beast and hold it in his thrall ever since?

And it _had_ been the thrashings of a wild beast; all Fenris had managed to do when he escaped was give Danarius and his subordinates the run-around and hurt himself really quite badly in the process and it was, his master said, really quite lucky that he had found him and taken him home when he did, otherwise who knew what he might have done to himself? When he had come back to himself Hadriana was gone, apparently caught in the path of his wrath. Secretly, that is one thing he doesn’t regret. It is also the kind of act that would get any other slave killed. Danarius had spared him death and for that he is obscenely, sickeningly grateful, even though he wishes he didn’t have to pretend that he felt anything except resentment towards Hadriana, and even though he sometimes catches himself wishing he would die in his sleep.

The clouded blot in the middle of his memory did trouble him, briefly, when he first awoke back in Tevinter. But it has been over a year, now, and he doesn’t worry about it too much anymore. It has always been so, in many ways; his life before serving Danarius has always been a blank. Now this, too, shall remain something lost to him forever. He isn’t sure he would like to remember even if he was given the chance. Danarius has said that when he brought him home he was mad, feral, and when he thinks about it all he gets is an aching, sick feeling in his chest; he must have done something truly terrible, something worse than killing Hadriana, for such an awful feeling to echo from a time of which he has no recollection at all.

“Speaking of slaves, Senators,” the young magister says, in a low voice, “I may have an investment opportunity for you, if either of you are interested.”

The other Senator raises an eyebrow. “Oh really? I wasn’t aware you dabbled in the trade.”

“I was looking for some new house slaves of my own. I ended up sourcing…more than my needs require, at present. There’s coin in it, or warm bodies, if you have the need.”

“Well,” says Danarius, “You’ve certainly piqued my interest. Perhaps we would be better off continuing this conversation in slightly more private quarters?”

The magister nods. “Of course.”

There are small reception rooms set into alcoves all through the hall, hidden by elaborately embroidered, draping curtains; Danarius leads the group over to one such entrance and pulls the curtain aside, letting his companions file into the room before he moves to enter himself. Fenris moves to follow and Danarius stops him, apparently deciding that his current companions are trustworthy enough that none of them are going to take the relative seclusion of the private chamber as an opportunity to kill him: or at least that if they do, he will be able to handle them without the assistance of his pet.

“Stand guard,” his master orders, and the curtain closes behind him.

Fenris sighs, shifts, and then relaxes into his familiar role as bodyguard, balancing his weight on the balls of his feet and scanning the area. It will be a quiet evening, probably. He has had to thwart attempts on Danarius’s life before, but never at events like these; any overt violence occurring in such a formal setting is usually not from one magister to another but from a magister to a slave, and that sort of occurrence is so commonplace that it doesn’t really count as violence, anyway, not unless the slave fights back. Fenris understands that this is simply how the world works, but he still wishes that it were otherwise.

The ball is, for the most part, full of the same familiar-by-sight faces that he’s seen many dozens of times before at all the must-attend events of the Minrathous social calendar. There are, as always, a few new people scattered among the regulars and the innumerable slaves; veterans of the Qunari incursions, invited along to honour their bravery or else let the magisters speculate about their scars; ambitious foreign merchants or lords, eager to make connections; new apprentices.

One man in particular catches his interest and he watches for a moment, curious. His clothes, while well-cut, mark him immediately as a foreigner. He is in deep conversation with a dwarf and one of the magisters, but while the dwarf is chatting away with an easy charm that immediately marks him as ‘merchant’, there is a tension in the man’s shoulders and his eyes keep flicking towards the door.

Fenris knows, then, that he is going to be witness to a confrontation before too long.

Perhaps more than one. To his right a woman, dark-skinned and beautiful, strides across the floor, a long, ornate coat swishing at her ankles. A man follows her, carrying the unmistakeable demeanour of the spurned would-be lover. “Don’t mistake me, I’m very _glad,_ ” the man says. The woman rolls her eyes, almost imperceptibly, to herself, and ignores him. The elf’s interest is piqued – drama such as this is not a rare sight at these functions, but the woman looks like she might be the type to hit back not with words or thrown drinks but with fists, or maybe fireballs.

“Maybe after this we could just catch up over drinks?” The woman just keeps walking and passes him, her jaw tight with irritation, with the man trailing in her wake. Fenris takes consolation in the fact that he clearly isn’t the only one in the room who wants to be anywhere else but here.

He has been watching her for just a moment too long. She catches his eye, and then stops dead, so abruptly that her companion, trailing behind, almost bumps into her.

“Oh no,” says the woman, staring. “No.”

Fenris shifts uncomfortably and automatically lowers his gaze. She’s still staring at him and he wonders what it is he’s done to disturb her. Is it because she caught him watching and took offense? Is it the markings? It has been the markings before; Danarius takes pleasure in how often they seem to intimidate or impress people, especially at social gatherings like this. It makes him feel sort of powerful sometimes, but mostly it just makes him feel like an outsider, a complete non-person even by slave standards. It’s not rare to have people stare, or look wary, or examine him curiously like someone inspecting an exotic sculpture or animal. Open-mouthed horror is a rarity, though.

The woman’s companion looks from him, back to the woman and frowns. He puts a hand possessively on her shoulder. “I _said_ ,” he says irritably, “We should catch up over drinks. It’s been some time since you and I -“

“No,” she snaps, finally pulling her gaze away from Fenris, turning to him and brushing his hand away. “No, we really shouldn’t. In fact I think it’s best that you go, actually.”

The man draws close to the woman, bristling, and Fenris tenses. If there _is_ a fight, he must not let it spill into the quarters his master is occupying or else face punishment. “I think not, Isabela. You _owe_ me.”

“Devon,” she says, and her voice is a dangerous undertone. “Shut your mouth or I will do it for you.”

“You can’t just walk away from who you truly are, Isabela,” he continues, undaunted. “You may be playing the saint now but I remember what you’re really capable of. Lovely Isabela, who helps kings on noble quests out of the goodness of her heart? Who takes pity on _slaves_?” He laughs, darkly. “After what you did when we –“

There is a flurry of movement. Fenris dares to look up and sees that the woman has her companion pinned against the wall, a cruel-looking curved blade held to his throat.

“Not one more word,” she hisses. “Not. One. Nothing happened. Understand?” The man nods, tries very hard not to swallow, and the woman removes her blade. “Get out of my sight,” she growls, and he does, sloping away like a disgraced animal.

Fenris has the sudden urge to congratulate her for a job well done, which is absurd; firstly because it’s not his business, secondly because speaking out of turn like that is something that was thoroughly stamped out of him years ago, and thirdly because she is holding a large dagger and he has no idea if speaking to her would lead to a confrontation. He could tear her apart like paper, of course, but killing your betters rarely goes down well in Tevinter, even if you have permission to do so for self-defence.

The woman runs a hand over her face. She keeps glancing at him and it’s unnerving, so he just goes back to doing what he’s meant to be doing – scanning the hall, keeping a lookout for trouble and a guard on the doorway – and ignores her.

“Fenris?”

He turns. She’s looking at him apprehensively and he wonders how she knows his name; but then, he recognises her, doesn’t he? Something about the way she moves, about the golden stud in her lip and the matching gold of her eyes. He can’t pinpoint it, though.

There is a long silence. Fenris is waiting for an order or a question but none seems to be forthcoming, so he clears his throat. “May I help?”

“You don’t know who I am, do you,” she says, quietly.

He doesn’t know how to answer that. He’s seen her before, he knows. Perhaps during the skirmishes on Seheron. But the truth is she’s right, he doesn’t know, and so he just looks down and avoids meeting her eyes.

She shifts. Thumbs the hilt of her blade. “Is your master here?”

He nods. An acquaintance of Danarius, then. “If you would like to speak with him, I could…”

She waves the offer away impatiently with her hand. “No. Maker…no. That’s not what I meant.” She starts at him, frowning, and then abruptly turns away, coat swishing. “Andraste’s arse. I need a drink.”

She stalks off and Fenris watches, utterly perplexed, as she grabs a glass from an attendant slave, downs the contents in one, then marches up to the party he had been watching earlier – the tense man, the merchant and the magister – and drags the dwarf away from the conversation without ceremony.

Fenris rolls his shoulders, looks straight ahead and does his utmost to concentrate on what he is supposed to be doing. It is absolutely futile. The woman – Isabela – and the dwarf are standing by the wall, talking in low, furious voices, and they are just close enough that he can hear the conversation, or at least get the gist of it, through the ambient murmur of the crowd. And he can’t help it. He listens.

“Rivaini, I told you what happened.”

“Yes, but I didn’t expect… oh, _shitting hell_ , Varric. What are we going to _do_?”

The dwarf thinks for a moment. “One thing at a time. First, we make sure our royal friend over there gets out of this party _without_ getting himself torn apart by unholy forces of darkness. After that?” he pauses. “I don’t know, Rivaini. It’s like they say: you can’t save someone who doesn’t want saving.”

“Yes you bloody well can.”

“Let me rephrase: you can’t save someone who doesn’t want saving, particularly if the ‘someone’ in question is very angry and has a gigantic sword.”

There is a long silence; Fenris is desperately torn between wanting to hear more and wishing they would move further away, just so that he doesn’t have to hear them. He feels supremely uncomfortable; he’s not stupid enough to think they aren’t talking about him, but he can’t for the life of him work out what their angle is, or how any one part of their conversation relates to the others. There are people who make a living out of stealing and reselling other people’s slaves to interested parties; demand is high for slaves who are already well-trained, or gifted with special talents, and some magisters would be willing to pay slavers for the privilege of owning one without much interest in whether that slave had been obtained at the expense of one of his fellow nobles. It occurs to Fenris that for the right buyer, he himself might fetch a very high price indeed.

“Look, Rivaini,” the dwarf says in an undertone. “I understand where you’re coming from. Honestly I do. Nobody regrets what happened more. But what do you propose we do?”

“We could - I don’t -” Isabela hesitates. “Blast.”

“’Blast’ is right. If there were any easy way…”

The dwarf trails off. Fenris wonders why until he notices the sudden commotion in the ballroom entryway, the flow of the crowd ebbing forward. The dwarf’s companion, the foreign man, shoots the pair an urgent look. This must be the person he has been waiting for. The new arrival is tall, and dark-haired, and has an air of assured superiority that is remarkable even by Tevinter nobility’s usual standards; Fenris watches as other guests crowd around him, peppering him with questions, eager for a glimmer of reflected glory.

The tense man motions to his companions, his mouth a hard, angry line. They spread out and he strides towards the magister and his assorted sycophants, alone. Fenris wonders if he’s even going to bother introducing himself. Going by the expression on the man’s face, it seems just as likely that he’s going to try to gut the man without any preamble.

“Aurelian Titus?”

The magister turns. “Yes?”

“Do you know who I am?”

“No.”

“Funny, that,” says the man, loudly, in a voice that makes it clear he doesn’t find it funny at all. “You tried hard enough to get your hands on me. You weren’t as lucky as you were with my father.”

“Ah, tainted scion of Calenhad,” says the Magister. There’s an awful, mocking shade to his voice – the kind of voice that belongs to somebody not only powerful but cruel, gleefully so. “The circle of blood complete. King Alistair of Ferelden. Welcome to Tevinter.” Fenris feels the ghost-touch of magic in the room, pulling at his markings.

“Stop that,” the man says firmly. “I want to know what happened to King Maric.”

“I see,” says the magister. Blades are drawn before Fenris can blink. He tenses and watches the King of Ferelden do the same. There is an awful moment of anticipation where nobody moves, waiting to see who will be the first to attack and open themselves to retaliation.

“ _Fall_ ,” says Titus, and Alistair punches him in the face.

“Templar!” the magister cries, “Seize him!” And then all hell breaks loose. Some of the guests start shrieking and running towards the door; Fenris, told to guard, doesn’t move. Instead, he watches as the woman, Isabela, plunges twin blades into the back of a man who is trying to throttle Alistair and wonders why he feels like he’s seen this all before.

Her gaze flickers over to him, back to the ring of combatants that are moving to surround her and Alistair. “Sweet thing,” she shouts, “If you’re going to have a life-changing epiphany, then now would be a _really good time._ ”

And then the momentary lull passes as somebody with a sword lunges at Alistair with a shout. The curtain behind him flies open; Varania, eyes wide, takes one long look at the fight and decides she wants no part in it. She and Danarius’s magister acquaintances run for the exit without looking back. His master appears last, and he surveys the carnage with mild interest before he turns to leave, motioning to Fenris lazily with his hand.

“Come, Fenris.”

Fenris doesn’t move. He looks to his master, then back to the fighting. Isabela kicks a man in the privates and then neatly beheads him when he doubles up, agile and confident like some kind of murderous dancer; the dwarf launches a crossbow bolt into somebody’s chest and there’s something bizarrely _comforting_ about it.

“I said _come_ ,” barks Danarius. His voice is lined with ice.

For one terrifying, chasm-yawning moment Fenris finds himself wondering what will happen if he disobeys. Then it passes.

He does what he is told.

________________

 

“ _Shit_!” Isabela says, and kicks the unconscious cultist between the ribs to vent her frustration.

“Devon!” Varric’s friend – Mae – cries, kneeling at the dead man’s side.

“Titus’s man got him, sorry,” Isabela says absently. “But – oh, Maker’s _balls_.”

Alistair kneels at her feet, examining the cultist. “He’s alive, I think,” he says. “Let’s just hope he knows something.”

“Well, that’s something at least,” rumbles Varric, with the kind of gruff joviality that he reserves for when he knows something has gone terribly, terribly wrong.

“That….elf,” Alistair says, carefully. “Friend of yours?”

Varric and Isabela exchange a look. “He was,” she replies. “It’s…complicated.”

 _It’s complicated_ , Isabela thinks, _because I ran, and I thought they could all look after each other fine without me, and it turns out I was just one of the first rats fleeing from a sinking ship._

Mae has been examining Devon’s corpse. Now she rocks back on her heels and swears under her breath. “You should leave before the guard arrives. There will be questions, and things will go smoother if I’m the one answering them.”

“You’re a doll, Mae,” purrs Varric, and pecks her on the cheek. He sidles over to Isabela as Alistair takes Mae’s hand and thanks her, ever the gentleman.

“Well, you tried,” says Varric.

She huffs. “Did you see? His master told him to leave and he just _went_.”

“I saw,” says the dwarf, solemnly. “He’s gone, Rivaini.”

“I know.” Her stomach feels like it is made of lead, but she shakes it off. “Ugh, let’s just get out of here. No sense hanging around.”

It has been four years since she left Kirkwall; a year since the Fenris she knew had been scattered to the four winds; three months since Varric had told her, over drinks, what fate he had met. She had mourned him, inasmuch as Isabela ever mourns anyone. The man she had met today was merely a ghost of somebody long departed.

Isabela makes a point of not dwelling on the past. Today, it seems, it is determined to haunt her regardless.

She grits her teeth, hauls the cultist up by his shoulders and prepares to head back to her ship. To the sea. To open waters, and freedom, and no regrets.

“Are you okay?” asks Varric.

“Fine,” she says.


	2. Chapter 2

When they return to Danarius’s townhouse, Fenris’s master sighs, walks into the middle of the antechamber, beckons him into the middle of the room and then hits him, hard.

It was a hesitation, only a hesitation – not an outright rebellion, but it seems this is enough. Fenris realises too late that while his master may speak lightly of his escape to strangers, he knows better than to let anything similar happen again. It doesn’t matter how seemingly small the defiance may be. It needs to be stamped out.

Danarius doesn’t often go out of his way to hurt Fenris, perhaps because Fenris so rarely does anything that could merit punishing, and even when he does he prefers to use his own magical talents to inflict the kinds of pain that don’t leave a mark. Fenris is a canvas for his master’s grand showpiece, a showpiece which Danarius likes to exhibit looking its best. He is too proud of his own lyrium-lined handiwork to risk doing anything that might detract from its aesthetics.

Tonight is, it seems, an exception.

It goes on torturously long; ends when Fenris has long since stopped trying not to cry out, when he’s at the point where each hit – carefully and clinically applied to the places on his back where it won’t destroy the flow of his markings, should it scar – has stopped drawing an involuntary flare of lyrium-glow from him and instead draws only flinches. He doesn’t black out. Danarius doesn’t let him.

_It could be worse_ , he tells himself. _It could be worse._ But at that moment he honestly can’t imagine how.

“I don’t enjoy doing this, you know,” Danarius says to him, matter-of-factly. “But you’ve got to _learn_ , my pet. It’s all for your own good.”

When, in the early hours of the morning, he finally falls into the blessed release of sleep, he dreams of dancing blades and high city walls, and of steady hands that hold him when he is too hurt to stand alone.

~~~

Isabela finds Alistair up on deck near the bow, staring pensively out onto the water. Night has drawn in; the lights of Minrathous, clinging like a mass of fireflies to the coast, reflect and sparkle on the surface of the sea.

“I don’t suppose you come bearing good news.”

“No,” she huffs. “Bastard just bit my hand for my trouble.”

It had been her own fault. She has tied people up many times before, for myriad purposes: in the middle of raids, as revenge, for mutual pleasure. She’s done it so many times her fingers work the knots automatically, deftly moving from one limb to the next. It had been her own fault, because she _knew_ the cultist was semi-conscious and she hadn’t been concentrating. Had not had her guard up.

She keeps thinking about the bloody collar. _Damn it all to hell_.

“I’m changing the terms of our agreement,” she declares.

Alistair glances at her sidelong, raises both eyebrows and then straightens up. “Oh _really_.”

“Really. Sorry,” she says, brightly. “Should have warned you: us pirates are a fickle bunch. To be brutally honest you’re lucky I haven’t double-crossed you five times already.”

Alistair gives her a dubious look but the ghost of a smile traces his lips. Alistair doesn’t smile much, which is a shame; he’s rather handsome and - though there’s something to be said for the strong, stoic types – Isabela knows his real smile becomes him, transforms him into something truly delightful. He doesn’t wear it much these days. Kingship will do that to a man.

“All right, then,” he says, crossing his arms and leaning back against the side of the ship. “Enlighten me. What is it you want?”

“Well, firstly: I’m declaring a day of shore leave.” Alistair opens his mouth. “And _I would strongly suggest_ that this day be used to get as much information about our charming informant as we can, so we can leave post-haste the day after tomorrow.”

Alistair closes his mouth, gives her a long look and then nods. “…All right. Deal. What’s the second part?”

“Well, I’ve had a good long think,” she says, “And I have decided that as an honorary member of my crew, it’s only fair that you participate in all crew activities. I’m going raiding. I want you to come.”

Alistair gives her a piercing look.

“…This is about your friend, isn’t it?” he says, finally.

She says nothing for a while, leaning against the bulwark and staring out into the night. “The man who… who _owns_ him. He’s a mage. I could use a templar at my back.”

“He’s a slave, then.”

“He wasn’t always.”

“Who is he?”

Isabela sighs. “Originally? I haven’t a clue. He was already a slave when I met him. Well, ex-slave. We both spent some time hiding out in Kirkwall a few years ago.”

“I’m guessing the ‘hiding’ part didn’t work out so well.”

“Not really, no. But it was good while it lasted. He was doing pretty well, too. Considering.”

“So what happened?”

“A mutual acquaintance of ours decided that our broody friend was better suited to a life in servitude,”supplies Varric, coming up behind them. “The elf’s old master tracked him down eventually, of course, and he handed him over, no questions asked.” He looks to Isabela. “What, Rivaini, don’t I get an invite? I’m hurt, deeply hurt.”

“It’s a dramatic, unplanned, ill-advised rescue mission with the potential to go horribly wrong in a dozen ways.” Isabela replies, turning. “Of course I didn’t ask you. I just assumed you were coming.”

“You realise,” says Varric, “That this is just as likely to get him killed as it is get him free.”

Isabela has thought about this. “If it all goes balls-up and I have to slit his throat, so be it. I seem to remember he was pretty big on the whole death-or-freedom thing.”

“Not in the end, he wasn’t.”

“Only because Hawke stabbed him in the back.”

Varric sighs. “True enough.”

“I’m going to kill him,” she says, firmly. “When we’re done with this saving-royalty thing we’re going to come back, flush him out of whatever hole he’s crawled into, and then I’m going to kill him. Slowly.”

“So, your highness,” asks Varric, “What’ll it be?”

“Let me get this straight,” says Alistair slowly. “You want to drag me along on a highly dangerous, likely-to-fail jaunt for the sake of somebody I know next to nothing about, at great risk to my personal health, while we put the quest we’ve _already_ committed to on the backburner?”

“Yes.”

“I haven’t done anything remotely similar since I was a Warden,” he says wistfully. “Sign me up.”

“Fantastic,” says the dwarf. “Now all we have to do is get the elf on side and we’re golden.” He turns to Isabela. “You do know that this could end in our grisly deaths.”

“Don’t remind me,” she replies. “If I think about that fist too much you’ll wake up tomorrow and this ship will be halfway to the Anderfels, rescues be damned.” She has faced Fenris’s wrath before, in a dream; his sword hadn’t even been real, and neither had her flesh, but it had still hurt like absolute hell. She does not wish to repeat the experience.

“I’m just saying. If one of us winds up with the elf’s hand where our heart used to be, I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’.”

“Now hold on a moment,” says Alistair, suspiciously. “I thought you were friends. He would attack you…why?”

“He doesn’t remember,” Isabela explains. “All those years he had free…they’re just gone. Wiped. Chances are he’s going to react badly to us trying to kidnap him.”

“If the worst comes to the worst, Rivaini, we knock him out and deal with it later,” says Varric soothingly. “Best we can do in the circumstances.”

Alistair frowns. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Varric, but your ‘mutual acquaintance’ sounds like a real bastard.”

“Antiheroes,” Varric sighs, long-suffering. “They make for great literature, of course. But let me tell you, oh king – they’re hell to be around.”


	3. Chapter 3

Fenris wakes to find himself curled up on cold floor with Varania’s slim hands pressing lightly on his back.

Danarius has, it seems, decided that he has adequately made his point, and now that Fenris has been put back in his place he is just another kind of canvas – this morning, he is an opportunity for his apprentice to practice curative spells, and it is not pity or compassion but practicality that governs his treatment.

He is still chained to the wall by his throat. Fenris lies there, listening to Danarius talk his apprentice through the finer points of restorative magic, and wishes that he was still asleep, or dead.

“There we go,” Danarius says, benevolently, as Varania seals the last of the welts on his back. “No harm done. Lesson learned, hmm? Now say thank you, Fenris.”

“Thank you,” he says, obediently.

He pointedly does not let his apprentice heal his bloody lip or the dark bruise on his jaw. They sting all day, a sharp little reminder of his place in the world. _No harm done._

It seems as if things are almost normal for most of the day. Danarius spends most of it writing papers, Fenris always close at hand to carry out his every order. There’s a curious tension in the air, and Fenris doesn’t know if it’s his master’s lingering anger or his own sudden awareness of the fragility of his position that makes it so. He has always known that his life will always be dedicated to serving his master, but now he realises that he is destined to forever walk on eggshells. Whatever meagre trust his master may have had in him is broken, and anything less than complete, unhesitating loyalty from him will mean facing his master’s wrath. It will be so for the rest of his life.

In the evening, Danarius leaves the townhouse to attend an evening of drinks with a fellow senator – and for once, he leaves Fenris behind, assigning him to Varania’s service for the evening instead. Fenris understands that this is just another part of the game. He may be valuable, and useful, to his master, but he is by no means essential. Danarius has other guards; guards that aren’t as flashily embellished as him, or as fast, but capable nonetheless. If he proves himself too inconvenient, Danarius can carry on perfectly well without his favourite pet.

Fenris has never felt quite so hopeless.

Varania spends the evening curled up in the townhouse’s small library, poring over expensive-looking arcane tomes that Fenris can’t read and probably wouldn’t be able to understand even if he could. She ignores him, as always, immersed in her study. He brings her evening meal, pours her drinks, lights the candles as the night draws in. Eventually she runs an exhausted hand over her face.

“Look…you don’t need to be here. I don’t need you. Just…go to bed.” And then she adds, “Please,” which is exactly the kind of odd, unnecessary gesture that makes Varania so awkward to be around.

He goes.

But he doesn’t sleep: instead he lies on the hard, low mattress and stares up into the darkness, and for the first time in a long time he tries, really tries, to remember anything about himself beyond his life with Danarius. It seems impossible to even imagine; his world is here, has always been here. But there are people he doesn’t know who know him; there are sounds he recognises but can’t place; there are scars on him that he did not have before his rampage. He grasps half-heartedly for something, anything, substantial…and there is nothing. Whatever traces remain in him are just echoes, ghosts of something long since exorcised.

  
~~~

Fenris has closed his eyes and is just drifting on the edge of sleep when a bang and a scream jolts him back into consciousness, and he doesn’t even think. Every nerve in his body becomes electric. He runs.

The corridors are only dimly lit, and he’s on the upper level of the entrance hall before he spots anything untoward; a glimmer of light on armour around the corner and there stands – inexplicably – the man from the previous day’s party, looking out of place and unreal in the candlelight. At his feet is one of Danarius’s guards, slumped like a ragdoll against the wall.

And while one part of his brain thinks _King Alistair of Ferelden_ the other part just thinks _intruder._

The man turns. “Oh, Maker,” he says. There is blood on his sword.

Fenris has not left the townhouse all day. He does not have his blade.

He still has his fists.

“Look,” Alistair is saying, “I don’t want to have to -”

Fenris’s markings flare. He lunges and the man smartly sidesteps. Fenris wheels on him, fingers aiming for the throat, but suddenly Isabela is there, yanking his head back, hooking one of her legs around his own and _twisting_ , using his own weight to throw him off and away from the warrior.

Fenris staggers away, regains his footing and crouches, like a cornered animal, ready to strike.

“Time out. _Stop_ ,” she says, and her voice has the ring of authority, of somebody who is used to being obeyed, and it makes him hesitate, just for a moment.

The house is waking up now; Fenris clearly wasn’t the only one who was disturbed by the commotion. Several doors slam open on the lower level of the hall and the house’s guards swarm through, drawing their swords. Alistair swears and runs off to engage them, and from somewhere out of Fenris’s field of vision there comes the sound of a crossbow bolt speeding through the air. So the merchant is here, too.

“I don’t want to fight you.” Isabela says. He eyes her wicked twin daggers. Her shirt is splattered with blood.

“You are an intruder,” he snarls.

“And you deserve better than this shithole,” she replies, and then curses under her breath. “Ugh, I’m no good at these things. Look.” Carefully, slowly, she takes her blades and places them back in their holster, then raises her hands, palms towards him. “Friendly, see?”

This, he knows, is the moment he should strike. He is alight with adrenaline, his heart pounding – these people are _in his home_ , and he is the little wolf, trained to guard his master and his master’s possessions fiercely, with unquestioning loyalty. He should lunge forward and snap her neck, and he knows he is fast enough that she would not be able to stop him.

He knows her from somewhere. He cannot pinpoint it.

_Sweet thing,_ he thinks, _if you’re going to have a life-changing epiphany, now would be a really good time._

He is paralyzed.

She glances at his busted lip. Her tawny eyes are hard and fierce. “Your master gave that to you?” She takes his silence as an affirmative. “Bastard.”

Fenris says nothing. Behind her, Alistair and the merchant are doing their best to hold the stairs, and out of the corner of his eye he watches as Alistair, already engaged, is leapt on from behind by one of the guardsmen. He struggles, desperately, trying to throw the man off while still turning the blade of his original opponent.

**“** Varric!” he shouts, and Fenris hears a hard _thunk_ and a cry as a crossbow bolt meets its target.

“Say hello to Bianca!” roars the dwarf, and not only does Fenris automatically know he means his crossbow, he also feels like he knows the name a split second before he actually hears it. Both of these things are bizarre. Impossible.

“Who a _re_ you?” he asks.

Isabela opens her mouth, thinks, and then says, simply. “A friend.”

He laughs. He can’t remember how long it has been since he last laughed; the sound wells up bitter and ugly in his throat. “I don’t have any friends.” And although he does not remember who this stranger is, does not what part of the void in his memory she is supposed to fill, he knows from the hollow, cold feeling in his gut that this is unequivocally true.

“Oh, sweet thing,” she says. “I know it must seem like that, but… It was a long time ago. Things got messy. So…how about we start again?”

“What do you want?” he growls. It sounds more like a plea than he had intended.

“I just want to get you out of here. It’s complicated, but…well, we can talk later, when there’s less chance of imminent death. But for now? You’re going to have to trust me. Just a little bit.”

“I can’t.” Something awful and painful is happening in his chest. He doesn’t understand _why_ any of this is happening. He has never had friends. He can’t recall ever particularly wanting any. But somehow faced with these strangers, these people who claim to know him, who act like they might even inexplicably _care_ – they drag up some terrible feeling from the depths of him, some roaring, tearing grief that threatens to overwhelm everything else. He has never felt so alone. “I can’t.”

“Fenris,” Isabela starts, but she is interrupted by a loud bang from behind her as the door to the foyer bursts open. Fenris goes cold. In the doorway stands his master, flanked by his guard.He stares aghast at the scene that greets him – the corpses of his guards, the blood on his tapestries, and then his gaze lands on Fenris, standing motionless before an intruder he should have killed on sight.

Fenris knows that nothing with be okay ever again.

“What are you doing?” his master roars. “Kill them!”

And though every fibre of his being tells him to do it, to just stop delaying the inevitable and do as he is told – _every order he has ever been given, he has followed –_ he doesn’t. His markings, driven by something several steps ahead of his conscious mind, surge to life the second he is given the order, but he doesn’t do it. He forces the power back down. He is shaking.

“Come with me,” Isabela says, urgently. Her eyes are alight with intensity. She smells of blood and sweat and salt.

“I cannot – my master – he - ” He falters. His master, who he is disobeying already by not putting a hand through the trespasser and gutting her where she stands. The repercussions are going to be unimaginably awful, worse than the day before, and even worse is the fact that these people came for _him_. Even if he repents now, even if he takes the punishment and hopes that one day Danarius will forgive him, hopes that one day everything can go back to how it was, will there be more where these three came from? And if so, is it even worth Danarius keeping him alive? Fenris knows he is intrinsically worthless – it is only the lyrium that gives him any value. Maybe this will be the final impetus for his master to give up on him as a failed experiment and slaughter him as one would slaughters any rabid beast. Maybe the lyrium can even be recovered afterwards.

“Forget him,” Isabela says, and then ducks instinctively; there is an almighty explosion and part of the bannister that lines the second level just isn’t there anymore. The heat from the blast washes over them and Isabela feels safe enough to look over her shoulder, just for a moment.

“Varric?”

“Still here, Rivaini! Remind me to never take my eyebrows for granted again!” Fenris feels the tell-tale pull at his markings and knows that, out of his view, his master is readying another attack. Somewhere below, Alistair shouts something unintelligible, and something strange and cool seems to wash over Fenris. The pull stops.

“Look, I know this all a bit sudden and,” Isabela gestures at her surroundings, “A bit horribly violent actually. I’m sorry. We didn’t have time to do this gently. But we have to get out of here, and you need to come with us.”

Danarius lets out a wordless bellow of fury and starts towards the stairs. Fenris just has time to feel a surge of panic over how things could only get immeasurably worse if his master comes any closer when Alistair comes out of nowhere, bowling the magister over with his shield.

“Rivaini!” The dwarf yells over his shoulder. “Wrap this up, we need to go!”

“I’ve got a ship now,” the woman says suddenly, as if continuing a conversation they have never had. “I won’t lie to you, it’s overcrowded and it smells of piss and some days you won’t eat much better than the shit I’m sure they make you live off here. But still. Freedom. High seas. Plunder and booty, potentially. All the ale you can drink – or wine, if you like. What do you say?”

He wonders if he is perhaps asleep. Perhaps the wounds on his back were worse than he had thought, and this is some kind of bizarre fever dream. It sounds wonderful and terrifying, the life she is describing, but it is not his life. His purpose, his life has been serving Danarius. His first memories are of serving his master. His last ones will probably be remarkably similar.

It occurs to him that this is an awful way to live.

“I-” he stammers, and then stops, because Isabela isn’t even looking at him anymore. She is frozen, staring at a point past his shoulder and Fenris turns instinctively, even as another part of him screams for him to not take her eyes off the stranger even for a moment. It’s Varania, standing stock still further down the corridor, clutching her staff. She still has her nightdress on.

“ _Shit,_ ” Isabela says emphatically.

Fenris waits for the pull of magic, for the fireball or frost that will engulf the stranger and perhaps him, too.

It doesn’t come.

“You came for him,” she says. Her voice is strong, but shaking.

“Are you going to stop me?”

Varania stares at them both, solemnly, for a long moment before she answers.

“…No.” Fenris stares, and for once, _for once,_ she actually looks at him, her gaze locking with his for a long moment before she turns her head away. “I can’t do this anymore,” she says. “I’m so sorry, Leto. Go.”

The whole world is falling apart. Fenris doesn’t understand any of it anymore, even at the most fundamental level. So he just turns to Isabela. Isabela, who has fire in her eyes. Isabela who looks worried but so _certain_ , so sure that every step forward she takes is the right one.

She raises her eyebrows. “Coming?”

“I – I cannot just leave,” he mumbles, and wonders in dim horror why ‘leaving’ is a concept that even fits comfortably in his mind.

“Of course you can,” Isabela says. “You’ve done it before.”

He blinks. She steps towards him, gingerly. She is within his reach now, easily, and when he doesn’t move, doesn’t pull back his hand the way he’s supposed to, doesn’t flare up and attack her the way years of training have hard-wired him to do, she grins wickedly at him and carefully holds out her hand the way one might hold it out to an anxious animal, or a child. He stares.

Reaching out feels like tumbling into the void; he can only go so far before he freezes, but it is enough – Isabela has read him, and reaches the rest of the way. She takes his hand and the fingers fit; she pulls and, inexplicably, he follows.

He wonders if he has gone completely mad.

“We’re done here!” Isabela’s shout is the bark of authority, and her merchant companion pauses for only a moment on the upper level, taking one final, calculated shot before trailing behind them on their flight down the stairs. Some of the guards are still standing; one of them lunges for them, and Isabela draws one of her blades with her free hand, palming it and slicing it neatly across his neck without even breaking stride.

Danarius is on the floor, Alistair standing over him, and as they run past the man makes a violent, very final motion downwards with his sword. Fenris does not see the result, cannot even begin to process what may or may not have just happened. He thinks he may fall apart completely if he thinks about it even for a moment. He focuses on not stumbling, on keeping his feet moving, flying on wings of terror out into the antechamber and beyond, tumbling out onto the street with the man and the dwarf trailing in their wake.

The night air hits them, cold and clean, as they clear the doors of the mansion and Isabela cannot resist crowing into the night, victorious. They run. She does not let go of his hand. He is grateful – he is afraid that if she lets go, he will run straight back to Danarius, consequences or no. And he needs something to hold on to, in the face of the sudden, terrifying openness of the world. Fenris wonders if there is a point in a person’s life where everyone feels this way: if the dwarf, or the man, or Isabela, has ever had their whole preordained future torn away and realised that now they have to construct their own out of whole-cloth. He hopes for their sake that they haven’t. Fenris has never felt more alive, but he has also never felt more afraid.

They escape through the maze of Minrathous’s forgotten alleys and backstreets. When they eventually slow to a walk, Fenris can smell the pungent smell of fish and salt on the breeze.

“ _Maker_ , that felt good,” Isabela exclaims, slightly out of breath. “Haven’t done anything like that in years.”

“You think this is impressive?” The dwarf chuckles. “This is just the practice run. You just wait until round two. _That’s_ when things are going to get really interesting.”

“Yes, well,” says Alistair, deadpan. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.”

Isabela turns to Fenris, grinning. “I must admit, you had me worried for a second back there.”

“ _You_ had _me_ worried,” Alistair interjects. “Did I see you put away your weapons earlier? In the middle of a fight? You are mad. You are completely mad.”

Isabela shrugs nonchalantly. “No risk, no reward, sweet thing. Fenris,” she says, “Fenris, this is Alistair – the, um, King of Ferelden. Alistair, this is Fenris. A friend.”

“When we do rescue parties, we go high-class,” quips the dwarf.

“Nice to meet you,” the man says, cordially, like he hasn’t just violently invaded Fenris’s home and slaughtered a dozen men in front of him. There is light gash on his cheek and blood on his face. The King of Ferelden has blood on his face and it is Fenris’s fault. He finds himself unable to speak.

“And this is Varric,” continues Isabela, gesturing towards the dwarf. “Excellent partner for drinking and fighting, but take everything he says with a pound of salt. Especially if he tries to tell you that story about me and the Nevarran wyvern-hunter, that one is _vastly_ inaccurate.”

“A pleasure, as always,” says Varric, winking at her. “So, elf, are joining us on our quest for glory, riches and possible respite from royal duties? Or are you only with us until the next port?”

Somehow, he finds his voice. “…I’m sorry?”

“We’re off to sea to fight what is, apparently, a dragon cult,” Isabela explains, “And to perform the most spectacular rescue mission of our time, presuming this isn’t a completely mad idea that gets us all killed. _Might_ have left that out of the sales pitch. So. Are you in?”

Fenris does not know what else to do. He has come this far. And why not? Without these people he is lost, just another fugitive or vagrant with no future and no idea what to do without a master. “I find myself with no other engagements,” he says. “I may as well.”

Isabela’s laugh is loud and glorious and she says “ _Fenris_ ,” as if she’s only just realised he is there, which is ridiculous because she is still clutching his hand.

“Good to have you with us, broody,” rumbles the dwarf, his eyes twinkling like somebody enjoying a private joke.

This is, Fenris feels, slightly unfair. He hasn’t done anything wrong that he knows of – well, he’s disobeyed his master – his _master,_ who may well be dead because of _him_ \- in the biggest, most heinous way possible, and _Maker_ does he feel as if at any minute he will be struck down for daring to do something so completely against everything he’s ever been taught to believe. But he hasn’t done anything to the dwarf. He doesn’t think he’s even exchanged two words with him. And although he’s been taught all his life to _not talk back_ , he makes an exception, this time.

“I am not _broody_ ,” he protests. The dwarf sighs and gives him an unfathomable look.

“I know, elf,” he says, “I know. But you used to be.”

 

 


End file.
